James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Perspective doesn’t apply just to architecture. Everything follows its laws, including people and animals. Some perspective teachers suggest drawing a box around an animal, and that’s a good idea.

An even simpler idea is to draw a set of lines across the form of any animal or person. It’s a quick way check the placement of all the features. If they’re out of position, you’ll know right away.

In these zoo sketches of a hippo, each head has a set of parallel lines to make sure the ears, eyes, and nostrils are kept in their proper relationship. In the top sketch, I’ve also lightly drawn the center line of the form. I tried to simplify the lighting by massing the shadow as a light, uniform tone.

In the lower sketch, I simplified the forms a bit (note the spherical forms around the eyes). The shading lines follow the cross-section contours, which helps even more to describe the form.

Always a great technique to use, helped me lots to over come distortion problems. Sometimes distortion isn't always a bad thing especially if you're trying to create an off the wall toon character. Something I also come to love is a blue pencil or animation pencil. You can use it to lightly draw all your lines and then add the details later. This pencil is also easily erasable but then you normally don’t have to go that far.

Sometimes, when the object is small compared to the viewing distance, using a parallel (axonometric) projection may be better than true perspective: it's easier and gives no distortion (which is often good for human features).I think you did the same with the hippo.

In this video we see Jean Giraud (Moebius) drawing his hero "Blueberry".Note the light, intuitive and loose drawing style. Yet, right before inking, he checks the perspective of the head with some faintly drawn guide lines.

K Tigress-I agree that in character design and portraiture a subject comes alive when you deliberately throw elements out of alignment, but of course to do that you have to know how to get them right first.

Max, yes, perspective is especially important for figure drawing. One thing that helps is to establish the eye level or horizon right away on a figure drawing, and to keep in mind that you're looking UP at anything above that line and looking DOWN at anything below it.